I started Forge, which is an open-source, free project that lets you play Magic: The Gathering against the computer. Currently other people are updating Forge and there will be no more posts to this blog.

Monday, July 12, 2010

New Version

The "new version" article is the easiest thing that I write each month. This version alone has 200 new cards and Forge now supports an amazing 3,428 cards. Thanks to Dennis, Rob, Chris, Beached As and everybody else for their effort. Thanks for donating your blood, sweat, and tears. While I generally consider programming to be fun, there are still times that I want to tear my hair out (really).

OK, the fun part, the new cards. Coat of Arms (Artifact, 5, Each creature gets +1/+1 for each other creature on the battlefield that shares at least one creature type with it) is a fan favorite that pumps up any tribal deck. Rite of Replication is bound to make a few blue mages happy. (2UU, Sorcery, Put a token onto the battlefield that's a copy of target creature. Kicker 5: If Rite of Replication was kicked, put five of those tokens onto the battlefield instead.) Another powerful blue card is Fact or Fiction (3U, Instant, Reveal the top five cards of your library. An opponent separates those cards into two piles. Put one pile into your hand and the other into your graveyard.)

Thrumming Stone is brimming with power. (Thrumming Stone, Artifact, 5, Spells you cast have ripple 4.) If you forget what ripple does (and I did), it means "Ripple N means that you reveal the top N cards and if you reveal a card that has the same name as the card you are currently playing, you may play that card for free." Basically you should put it in a deck where you have 4 copies of each card. Other ripple cards include Surging Might - 2G, Aura, Enchanted creature gets +2/+2, Ripple 4 and Surging Sentinels - 2/1, 2W, First Strike and Ripple 4.

The 5 card cycle from Judgment got an update that fixed the bug that made the game slow to a crawl: Brawn, Filth, Valor, Anger, and Wonder are now playable. Each card has an ongoing ability once it is sent to the grave. For example, if Wonder and an Island are you in grave, all of your creatures get flying, hooray. (Thanks to "Beached As" for the fix.)

A bunch of cards that lower the casting cost of spells like Thornscape Familiar (1G, 2/1, Red spells and white spells you cast cost 1 less to cast.) 16 affinity cards like Frogmite - artifact, 4, 2/2, Affinity for artifacts (This spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact you control.) Forge also has the 5 card cycle of "affinity for basic lands" Oxidda Golem, Razor Golem, Spire Golem, Tangle Golem and Dross Golem - cost 5, 3/2, Fear, Affinity for Swamps (This spell costs 1 less to cast for each Swamp you control.).

And…I always forget something, Forge now has a exe file. It “finds” Java, so it solves a few problems. The exe file also has a splash screen with a nifty card picture which is shown above. (Splash screens are unnecessary but they do look nice.)

The list of new cards and features could go on and on. While Forge may not have your favorite card, it still has hundreds of other great cards to use.

Forge (10 MB) - version 06-28 because that is when it was released on the forums

Yeah, but only because I mentioned it during a job interview. Then I had to change since from SourceForge to Google Projects. Another magic project "Wagic", stopped including the card pictures in main download and allows people to download the pictures themself, which solved his legal problem.

We'll try to add as many cards as we can. Most of the mythic rares are new but probably too complicated to code.

(I'm glad that Wizards decided to create to cards for the base set but it is hard to get really excited about it since of the most set is very plain or reprints. And I understand that a base set needs to be a little more simple. I remember when I was starting out and read a few Mirrodin cards and I couldn't really understand what they were trying to do.)

I think you did an incredible awesome (insert further superlative of your choice...^^)work here. I dunno nothing about coding and such, BUT I really like picking up a game of magic or two ;) I think the AI you created is far superior from that of DotP.

I played alot games with DotP, and I played alot games with your neat little programm and came to the conclusion, that yours is far more challanging (but still not as much as playing with my friends^^)than the other. And this deserves some serious props ;)

What do you think: Is it possible to make some sort of "clone" for a mobile phones, i.e. Android powered ones ?